35 episodes
Marlon and Jake Read Dead People Penguin Random House
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4.8 • 956 Ratings
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Marlon and Jake Read Dead People is a podcast hosted by the Man Booker Prize-winning and internationally bestselling author Marlon James and his editor, Jake Morrissey, Executive Editor at Riverhead Books. In each episode, Marlon and Jake talk about authors—specifically dead authors. Authors they like. Authors they hate. Great books, terrible books, and books they love that you’d never expect them to. As a writer and an editor, Marlon and Jake have read thousands of books between them, and they’re not shy in expressing their opinions about them. Sometimes they’ll agree, sometimes they won’t, but in every episode, they’ll tell you what they think— uncensored and with no holds barred. (That’s why the authors have to be dead.) So, listen along to hear about the spectacularly good, the hilariously bad, and the brutally honest.
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The Beach Read
In the final episode of the season, Marlon and Jake weigh in on their favorite vacation reads, including the ones they started but never finished. Tune in to find out which classic novels Jake took to the beach and which ones Marlon says should have been thrown in the ocean.
Subscribe to our River-herd newsletter for sneak peeks of our upcoming books, free giveaways, and exclusive content. https://sites.prh.com/riverhead-reader-newsletter
The Goodbye Look by Ross McDonald
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Chances by Jackie Collins
The Year of the French by Thomas Flanagan
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
The Golden Bowl by Henry James
The Ambassadors by Henry James
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Pronto by Elmore Leonard
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
Smallbone Deceased by Michael Gilbert
The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot by Robert Arthur, Jr.
Persuasion by Jane Austen -
The Campus Novel
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times—it was school. In this episode, Marlon and Jake discuss books where school is the setting or going to school is central to the plot. They debate which authors got school right and which got school wrong, what makes an inspiring teacher, and what the closed universe of a schoolyard or college campus can feel like. Tune in to hear Marlon and Jake reminisce over their own college experiences and what they were like as students.
Subscribe to our River-herd newsletter for sneak peeks of our upcoming books, free giveaways, and exclusive content. https://sites.prh.com/riverhead-reader-newsletter
Tom Brown’s School Days by Thomas Hughes
The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling by Henry Fielding
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
The Crime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Look back in Anger by John Osborne
Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
Absalom, Absalom! By William Faulkner
Love Story by Erich Segal -
City Settings
In this episode, Marlon and Jake talk about cities in books. Books set in memorable cities, books set in cities you're glad you've never been to, and books where the city itself is nearly a character. They talk about the specificity of London of the 19th century British novel, the New York novel, entirely fictional cities in Sci-Fi and Fantasy, and don’t miss Marlon’s personal experience with Bloomsday in Dublin!
Subscribe to our River-herd newsletter for sneak peeks of our upcoming books, free giveaways, and exclusive content. https://sites.prh.com/riverhead-reader-newsletter -
Characters Behaving Badly
In this episode, Marlon and Jake talk about the bad characters we’re not meant to like but do and the good characters we’re meant to like but annoy us. From Dracula to Daisy Buchanan to Oliver Twist and Bambi, the good-to-evil spectrum is vast and no character is safe from commentary. Tune in to find out which classic villain the duo unanimously hate, and which villain gives Marlon the chills and scares Jake to this day.
Subscribe to our River-herd newsletter for sneak peeks of our upcoming books, free giveaways, and exclusive content. https://sites.prh.com/riverhead-reader-newsletter -
Poetry FOMO
This episode, Marlon and Jake discuss a new subject for the podcast: poetry! From epic poems to sonnets to the Romantics poets to contemporary (dead) poets. They ponder over why people don’t read poetry as much as prose and recite, on the spot, lines of poetry that are forever engrained in their memories.
Subscribe to our River-herd newsletter for sneak peeks of our upcoming books, free giveaways, and exclusive content. https://sites.prh.com/riverhead-reader-newsletter -
Books Assigned in School
Books assigned in school evoke strong feelings. You either love em’ or you hate em.’ In this episode, Marlon and Jake discuss the books they wished they were assigned in school and the ones they suffered through. Accompanying the books taught in school, there are, of course, the teachers who taught them. A teacher can make or break a book read in school. As a literature teacher (as well as Booker prize winning author), Marlon acknowledges there are some novels assigned in school that you have to work to understand that are really good, but sometimes those novels are not good and if it weren’t for being assigned in school, we wouldn’t still be reading it.
Subscribe to our River-herd newsletter for sneak peeks of our upcoming books, free giveaways, and exclusive content. https://sites.prh.com/riverhead-reader-newsletter
Customer Reviews
Where you at?!
I MISS Y’ALL! Come back!!! ❤️
Missing You
Hoping you will be back both rested and energized in the fall. Just wanted you to know you were missed.
Melodious and twangy harmony
Like a party that goes on too long for all the wrong and right reasons